


The science and practice of surgery

by Naraht



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Codependency, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alec and Sandy in 1941.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The science and practice of surgery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oshun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oshun/gifts).



Alec's well-thumbed copy of _The Science and Practice of Surgery_ sat open on the desk in front of him, just familiar enough to pall and yet not nearly familiar enough to reassure. There was something reproachful in the battered text, his own half-illegible marginal notes and Sandy's emphatic underlinings mixed promiscuously together on the dogeared pages. The spine was broken, perhaps fittingly, somewhere in 'Orthopaedics.' He had not looked at it in weeks.

"Finals," he said, burying his face in his arms.

"You act as though you're the only one who ever will have to qualify as a doctor," retorted Sandy acidly.

"You have a year to go. It isn't the same thing."

"Another year of this? We'll be lucky if there's a hospital in the country left standing."

Once upon a time he could have counted on Sandy's sympathy, a cup of tea at his elbow or a quiet arm around his shoulders as he did his reading in the evening. Once upon a time he would have drawn assurance from the fact that Sandy believed in him unquestioningly. Nowadays, with a few weeks to go, Sandy hardly even went to the trouble of saying _I'm sure you'll pass_.

Scar tissue. That was what it was.

On Sandy's narrow wrists one could still see the remnants of that terrible night in the autumn, overlaid now to the point of near-invisibility, except for the expert observer, by the still-healing waxy burns from the incendiary. It seemed fitting that they were layered together so closely, as if these two reminders of Sandy's impulsiveness were in some obscure way (and Alec recognised that this was unfair as soon as he thought it) indistinguishable from one another.

A small part of Alec believed that Sandy might actually want him to fail. For them it would mean another year together in Bridstow; bought very dearly, to be sure, but when one considered that the alternative could be death, one could understand how Sandy at least might think it a price worth paying. So quickly had they shrunk from pride to survival.

And Alec was tired, sick to death, of understanding.

"Haven't you anywhere to go?" he asked, looking up again from his book. 

Sandy was wandering idly round the room, picking up knick-knacks from the mantelpiece as though searching for traces of dust. One imagined that he was not disappointed; though the bombing had slacked off since the terrible days in the spring, ruined buildings still scattered their freight on the air like pollen. It was a beautiful June day, the sun golden in the late afternoon sky, motes drifting in the brilliant shafts of light that shone into the room. 

If Alec could have cast off the harness he would have walked up to the observatory, found some secluded spot in the park where he could take off his shirt, lie in the sun, and... well, quite. But he was on his best behaviour, in more ways than one.

Stopping in his tracks, Sandy raised colourless eyebrows. "Why, where would you _like_ me to be?"

It was a question that could have inspired any number of half-sensible answers, including _queuing for some eggs, we haven't had any in weeks_ ; _at the hospital making yourself useful_ ; or, if one were in an only slightly bitchy mood, _getting some sun, you're as pale as a ghost already and a fortnight of night shifts will hardly help_. But the twist at the end of Sandy's question implied so much more than it said. They had been over it all before.

Alec sighed. "Sitting down, at least."

With this request Sandy complied, sinking into an armchair and crossing his legs showily. 

"The lengths I go to please you," he said, lighting a cigarette and addressing his remark to the ceiling. "And in my own flat, too."

That, for Alec, was the limit.

"If you don't like it here," he retorted, "then no one is stopping you getting out. The lease is up in a month anyway; if it's the money you're worried about, you needn't."

Never had Alec seen a man—or a woman, for that matter—whose eyes could fill with tears as quickly as Sandy.

"But I wouldn't _ever_ leave _you_ ," he said, as though the reverse were an imminent possibility.

To be entirely fair, it was.

After that the argument carried on, only increasing in intensity and pitch. It was the same, always; it did not even have the merit of variety to add intellectual interest to the usual wearying round: Sandy's faithfulness v. Alec's straying ways, Sandy's eternal devotion v. Alec's imminent departure. There was an element of hypocrisy here, if not downright untruth, to which Alec chose not to draw attention. It would only, he knew from long experience, make the hysteria worse.

So he remained silent, turning over in his mind the possibility—a distant possibility to be sure—that if he managed a considerably more than respectable pass on his Medical Boards, Dr. Mansell had promised to have a word with Major Ferguson about securing him an exemption from conscription for the purposes of further training in orthopaedic surgery.

Alec had not told Sandy, for a number of reasons, all of which seemed highly compelling. First, the chance was very slight indeed, and it would not do to get Sandy's hopes up. Second, he had no particular interest in orthopaedic surgery, and were it not for the war might well have chosen to pursue his rather guilty fascination with psychiatry. Third, relatedly, it seemed rather poor conduct to choose to accept a prestigious post simply in order to avoid the Royal Army Medical Corps.

This was, at least, the line that Ralph had taken when Alec had tried him on the question, avoiding the more immediate point: that Alec had come to half welcome the thought of conscription, holding as it did the promise of a simple, honourable escape from the problem of Sandy.

But then Ralph was a man in love. For the past few months he had been virtually incandescent with joy. He had not said anything about Laurie; he had not needed to. It only made Alec quietly, inescapably aware of the distance between them. Once upon a time, even if Ralph had hardly been speaking to him, they had shared at least a certain unluckiness in love. Now Alec was happy for Ralph—with an immense relief that he could never express in its entirety—while at the same time beginning to wonder whether he would be forever shut out from that particular paradise whose fruits Ralph was so obviously enjoying.

"Sandy," said Alec gently, half chidingly. "Don't borrow trouble. I'm here now."

Sandy only cried harder.

It was a pity, reflected Alec, that one could not break with a boy friend as easily as one removed an unwanted appendix, or even amputated a wounded limb. It had been easier with Ralph, superficially at least; Sandy was not half so sensible. But with both there was a similar feeling: that of having grown together, like a healing wound, sutured by time and, paradoxically, by the growth of the scar tissue itself.

He moved over to sit on the arm of Sandy's chair and held him close, caught by the odd, creeping arousal that Sandy's grief often stirred in him. Perhaps it was nothing more than familiarity, Pavlovian conditioning at its most perverse. He had loved Sandy once.

Perhaps he still did.

"I might fail," he murmured against Sandy's colourless hair.

"But of course you won't fail," wept Sandy. "Of course you won't."

That sudden affirmed faith caught Alec at some point utterly beyond rational thought. No Nazi interrogator could have done it better. He felt as though he were signing his own death certificate, and yet he could not stop himself from speaking.

"They told me," he began slowly, stroking Sandy's hair, "they told me that I might have the chance to stay on..."


End file.
